As I sat and thought about it, I realized that we did something different that morning. We had to run out the door quickly, and she didn’t get a part of her usual breakfast. One thing I do is we make homemade bone broth from scratch and I put ghee in it for her. I realized yesterday that she did not get that and that the very last time we were in a rush and she did not get ghee, we had the same thing happen, where she got very short tempered for no reason.

So I promptly went over and got a spoonful of ghee and gave it to her. Almost instantly she calmed down and became her normal usual self again. It was quite amazing.

You may be saying, wow, what a nice story this is. But what in the world is ghee? Ghee is simply clarified butter. It’s real butter that has been heated and they skim off the watery layer as well as all the milk solids that separate from it. What is left is ghee. What makes ghee nice is that because the milk solids are separated, even people who have lactose intolerance usually have no issues with ghee.

Ghee is extremely rich in antioxidants. It doesn’t need refrigeration, which is nice. It has an incredible flavor. Ghee can usually be found in your health food store, sometimes from a farmer’s market, and you can always make your own. It’s really easy.

Ghee is known for a lot of health benefits. According to the Bhavaprakasha 6.18.1, an ancient 16th Century Ayurvedic text, “Ghee is sweet in taste and cooling in energy, rejuvenating, good for the eyes and vision, kindles digestion, bestows luster and beauty, enhances memory and stamina, increases intellect, promotes longevity, is an aphrodisiac and protects the body from various diseases.”

Ghee is known to reduce inflammation, benefit nerve tissue, the brain, memory function, eye issues, is touted to help in detoxing the body, lubricate the joints, and even help with weight loss. The rich fat it offers makes it ideal to eat during pregnancy and as an early food for young children where the brain is still highly in development.

Now, I already knew all of that. But it still does not explain why it benefits my daughter’s temperament so much. But I can tell you one thing, she’ll be getting that ghee everyday from now on, no matter what. I can see the pattern of the difference it makes when she takes it as well as when she doesn’t. I did not know about the health benefits of ghee during my pregnancy, but you can be sure that next time, I’ll be making it a huge staple as soon as I get that positive test. ❤

I put a lot of my own quotes and thoughts up on my facebook page for the Black Sheep Princess. One of the topic areas that seem to be the most popular is when I put up statuses about toxic people. I take that to mean we all have toxic people in our life. What seems to be the most difficult to get a handle on is how to deal with these people in our lives. And wow, that is a weighty topic indeed.

I think toxic people come in all shapes and sizes. They can range from mild, medium, and extra severely toxic. Thing is, we all know them. Those people that just seem to create drama wherever they are. Those that seem to have a negativity around them ALL the time. Whatever shape or size your toxic person is, what is usually in common is that even though you may dearly love this person, you just don’t feel good when you’ve spent time in their presence. And how sad is that? And I’m not talking about you, but them. I mean, you were only in their presence for a short time. They have no escape. At least, no escape they are interested in taking.

I’d like to get more in depth on this topic in the future, but I wanted to limit this post to this truth: Don’t feel bad or guilty for getting away from toxic people. And that goes for toxic people who are family too.

Everyone has crap that happens in their life. We’ve all had to face some type of negative circumstances, abuse, neglect, and those things that life just throws our way. Toxic people just have never decided to turn their lemons into lemonade. And you know what? That is totally their choice to make. 100% hands down their choice to make. It’s their life and they can do what they want with it. To tell your toxic person that they can’t make that choice is just you deciding to become manipulative and controlling yourself. So don’t go there. It’s their life. Let them do what they choose to do with it. It’s not any of our business.

But you know what IS your business? What you do with YOUR life. And you get the same freedom to make your own decisions and choices. So may I humbly suggest that you utilize that freedom and get away from toxic people. When people decide to take a toxic path, you don’t have to stand right next to them and witness every second of it. You have every right to respect their choice and make your own choice and take your life on a different path.

It is totally okay for you to set boundaries for your life, to set limits on your influences, and for you to make choices about your values and to run after those things. If people around you, yes, even family, are so toxic, that being around them is going to deter you from living your life, having your values, and going after your dreams, then by all means, set boundaries and limit your time around these people.

Well, it’s family, you say. So what? When does being family give someone a right to treat you in such a way? I say because people are family, the standards should be set higher. If you’re family, you should be getting better treatment than the general public. At the very least, family should have enough respect to agree to disagree and recognize that every member of the family is entitled to the privilege and basic human right of choosing their own path in life.

All in all, you can’t control what other people do, and it’s not your job to fix other people or judge their choices. But you have 100% say about you. You have authority over you. You answer for you. So don’t worry about other people, even toxic people. If, in order to reach your destination, you have to let go of those who are headed for a different destination, then so be it. Let them go. It’s OK. You’re not bad or being mean. Take lead of your life and sail where your heart tells you. Reaching the destination that you are called to is something you surely won’t regret. ❤

The hard must become habit.
The habit must become easy.
The easy must become beautiful.
~Doug Henning

I am all about making excellence a habit. If we make it a habit, then we do not have to think about it anymore, it will become automatic. We need excellence to be automatic and easy.

It takes only a little bit of work to make something a habit. Only about a month’s worth of time, if that. A little work of sowing something, and you reap a LIFETIME of benefits from it. Once it becomes a habit, it is then automatic, and you don’t have to work hard at remembering anymore to do it, it has become a new normal.

My favorite habit is telling people throughout the day how I love and feel about them and what a difference they are making in my life. I made that automatic so that I will never regret not telling people throughout their lives how I feel. I will never have that day on their funeral and say to myself, I never told them such and such. It will never haunt me because I made that a habit, I made it automatic, I made it normal.

What would you like to have automatic in your life? Try making a list of one thing a month and at the end of the year, you will have twelve things that are now GOOD habits, that are EASY, that are AUTOMATIC, and you don’t need to have extra mental energy to make them happen. Being a mother, a wife, and my own person, and all the different hats I juggle, anything being easier is awesome!!! Habits are a gift to myself.

It’s Super Tuesday! Time to place your vote. Giveaways are in the process of being started for the BSP community. What would you most like to receive? Your votes will help shape these giveaways. If you don’t like any of these answers, feel free to write in your own. You can vote once per day. ❤

So there I was in late 2006, having come from a size 0 to where now a size 18 wouldn’t even fit, I have fired all of my doctors because I have had it with them, for this is where they led me to, and I felt near death. And that’s not an exaggeration. I felt near death.

Some days, I would take a breath and say thanks to God. Then take another painful breath and say thanks again. And that was my great accomplishment for the day. Breathing and being grateful for each one I was able to take, even in the midst of suffering. You can say, oh wow, that’s pretty awesome to be able to do that. Actually, it was a survival mechanism. I felt I could either choose to be grateful and lean on God, OR, I could give in to the massive depression and just spiral downward, possibly never to return. As hard as it all was, I just could not let this set of circumstances become my permanent story. I could not finish this side of eternity and be okay with giving up and settling for this place. I just couldn’t.

On the days breathing wasn’t such a chore, and I could at least sit up in a recliner, I would pull out my laptop and just started researching my symptoms and all I could find about weight loss. I was in a unique situation where I had a weight issue that wasn’t caused by wrong portion control, lack of proper exercise, or years of wrongful eating. In addition, I felt ashamed to have all that weight on. That shame was the least of my current problems, but it was there. I just felt like I wasn’t me anymore, that I was in a disguise, and completely unable to be who I really was. It surprised me to realize how physically expressive I was as a person, and not being able to do things, like dance, was just heartbreaking. Not to mention that I had difficulty doing much simpler things and was house-bound for the most part.

So I started at the beginning. I changed my diet. I got better nutrition. I tried all different types of portion sizes. I counted calories. I tried the “Atkins diet” where it is no carbs and high fat. I tried low fat. I tried no fat. I tried being a vegetarian. I tried juicing. I tried eating styles of different kinds from all over the world. I tried eating a very limited diet. I tried eating a varied diet. I tried the “Rice diet.” I switched to all organic foods. I eliminated all processed foods. I eliminated all sugar and all artificial sugar substitutes. I eliminated all kinds of sodas, both regular and diet.

I tried exercising out the WAZOO. I tried multiple kinds of exercise. I tried walking. I tried jogging/running. I tried weights. I tried joining different gyms. I tried home gyms. I tried traditional calisthenics. I tried yoga. I tried Pilates. I tried what little dance I could do. I tried “Zumba.” I tried swimming. I tried water aerobics. I tried breathing exercises. I tried workout DVD’s of all kinds. I tried every exercise/weight loss infomercial I could find. Whatever I could find, I tried.

I even did extreme types of fasting, detoxing, and cleanses. I did colon cleanses. I did candida cleanses. I did the “Master Cleanse.” I tried juice fasting. I tried the “Daniel fast.” I did several kinds of detoxing shakes. I checked and fixed my body’s pH level and brought it out of a very acidic state. I even did pure water fasting for several weeks in a row. (Yes, really. I have witnesses.)

I tried all the special diet teas, like “Wu-long.” Tried all the diet pills. Tried all the diet herbs. Even some kind of diet weight loss patch. I restored my adrenals and thyroid. I tried healing my hormones. I tried increasing my metabolism. I tried dealing with cortisol issues. I started on flower remedies. I dd counseling. I went through programs to heal my emotions. I did forgiveness and healing of past issues. I gave a ton of stuff away. I let go of everything I could think of, went down every known avenue possible. I was healing myself in every way I could think of: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

You want to know where all this got me? NOWHERE. Here I was, thinking that I could discipline myself out of this, that if I was just persistent enough, strict enough, dedicated enough, that, although it might take some serious discipline and time, that I could just “buck up” and slowly, but albeit SURELY, get this weight down.

While that works in some situations, as you can see if you watch shows like the “Biggest Loser,” I honestly learned the hard way that it was possible to, not only be in a situation where the weight problem was not caused by you, but also that it was entirely possible that you could have a weight problem that could NOT be corrected through diet, exercise, detoxing, fixing the hormones, body pH, and mere dedication and discipline alone.

Let me say this: Most cases of overweight issues ARE caused by bad diet, poor exercise, high rate of toxicity, hormones and body pH that are off, and can be fixed by adjusting these things. But that was not to be my story.

At this point, I was devastated. Again, I was faced with the choice to accept my fate and to give up. You have no idea how many people told me at this point how I didn’t look bad, that I didn’t need to lose weight, that this was just a part of getting older, that I should stop fighting and accept it, and that it really wasn’t that bad of a situation, and even saying how great I did look, and that I should be happy with this current reality. Now, I know a lot of them meant good. I know a lot of those who said that honestly cared about me. I also know that there was no worse thing they could have said to me.

Even though they meant well, all they were saying to me was to compromise. And if you know me, there is no worse thing than unrighteous compromise. I felt near death. That was NOT okay. I could not accept this new reality as permanent. I could not say that person in the mirror was me. I was literally a prisoner in my body. A slave to whatever it was that had happened. There was NO WAY I was going to stay a prisoner or a slave. I absolutely was resolved that I was not coming into agreement and making peace with these circumstances. This is when I changed from being sad about what had happened to being angry. Today, I thank these people who suggested compromise, cause it fired a new passion within me that I would never settle for this being my reality for the rest of my days.

So what do you do when the mainsteam paths do not work? What do you do when counting calories fails? Conventional wisdom said that if I did these things, if I worked hard enough, was disciplined enough, that the weight would come off. Um, it didn’t. ………. awkward pause ………. Where to now? ………. ??!!??!!??

All I knew at the time was that something strange was going on. There was apparently a lot I did not know. This was a deep mystery, and I needed to find out what it was all about. The only thing I DID know was that I absolutely, positively, was NOT going to compromise OR give up. ❤

I’m a weird mix of being extremely social and extremely private. I definitely need both and I absolutely love to be very open and real to those I have a chance to get to know and can see in person. I have some marvel at how very honest and real I can be under those circumstances – where really no question or topic is too personal for me. On the internet, facebook, or any area/circumstance where I have less control over who sees what and when, I am much more highly selective about what I share and fight the tendency to be anxious over what goes public. All this to say that telling even part of my personal story here is a big deal for me. I know the more I open up and make myself vulnerable in a righteous way, the easier it will get. And that is a much bigger part of my personality, a habit I have created of facing my fears. ❤

My HCG story begins about 9 years before I ever took a drop of the HCG itself. I became disabled in late 2001, just days after the towers fell. I went from being a young agile dancer to a situation where I suddenly couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk, could no longer work, I couldn’t take care of myself, my entire life just flipped upside down at the mere age of 23 years old. Not knowing any better, I went the conventional medical route of things. I trusted the doctors and the traditional medical community that they knew what they were doing. Several years later, I ended up with a literal suitcase of medications that I took daily, and a whole bunch more physical conditions than when I started. I was also severely underweight due to the side effects of some of the meds I was on. To give you a picture of that, I was 5’7″, only 93 pounds, and size 0 was a bit big. I looked like a cancer patient. You could see my ribs. I had so little fat on me that I had to bring a pillow with me to sit on everywhere I went because of the pain sitting down in most places with no natural cushioning.

In 2006, I went to the emergency room and was given a large dose of IV steroids. The amount that I had consented to was not followed, as I personally felt cautious about large doses of steroids. They assured me it was only going to be a certain amount. I found out later it was hundreds of times above that.

In the next four to six weeks that followed, I went from a size 0 to not being able to fit in a size 18. I got stretch marks. The weight was not even over my whole body. My abdomen was one size, my hips another, my thighs another, and not even close together in sizes. My face ballooned up too. I had no idea what was going on. It felt like it literally happened overnight. I suddenly could not go anywhere much. For one thing, I could not find any clothes that fit besides guy sweatpants. You can’t go too many places in male sweatpants. Size 18 would not fit at all and if I went up to the plus sizes, they would literally fall off to the ground. In addition, I am very tiny boned and also have fibromyalgia. The extra weight appearing all of a sudden was excruciating. Everything hurt. I would climb stairs like an old person, not sure if I could get all the way up, you know, like FIVE of them. I had to use wheelchairs and those motorized carts if I dared to venture out of the house. It was a nightmare.

I had never had a weight issue before. I didn’t know what to do. But it was at this point in my life that I fired my medical doctors, every last one of them. It was more than just a bad situation. The pain, being home-bound, the depression, and feeling powerless to change any of it – it was one of the darkest times of my life. I seriously for first time saw how bad extra weight could be.

Not knowing what it was like to be overweight, I had always assumed that the hardest part was looking in the mirror and self-image. Boy, was I wrong. Not that the self-image part isn’t hard, it IS. But now when I see someone overweight, I see the physical pain they are in. It was greater than I could have ever imagined. In fact, if I hadn’t gone through it myself, I would have thought people were greatly over-exaggerating, using it as an excuse to be lazy, and just out to get sympathy.

Most people get overweight gradually, over a period of time, usually years. Since mine happened virtually overnight, I got to see the comparison in a whole new way. I got to see how debilitating and painful it was. How much of my daily life and movement I lost. How even tiny things like sitting/laying down, bathing, brushing your teeth, even taking a breath, how all of that was so much more difficult and PAINFUL. I had no idea at this point that being able to see this was going to be a gift.

Most people gain weight over such a long period of time, they are unaware of what they have lost. They look in the mirror each day and don’t really notice the change they are undergoing. The pain and interference of what they can do in their daily lives is so gradual and minute, it slowly becomes accepted and slips by nearly unnoticed. To sum it up, it becomes a new normal for them. Because my weight came on so quickly, I was able to see exactly what I had lost. My life became a plethora of darkness and immense suffering. I did not recognize this person in the mirror before me. My physical body was groaning and sizzling with pain in every pore and every joint from the sheer extra weight. My emotional self was in absolute shock and frozen in trauma. I felt like I was suffocating in every conceivable way possible. Every breath, every step, every second was a strained effort, birthed in agony, and swaddled in a heavy blanket of despair.

At this point, I had no idea what had happened, I did not know what I needed to do to fix it, and I was so overwhelmed physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, that I honestly did not know how I was going to make it through each day. All I knew was that I had two choices. One, I could accept this and give up. Or two, I could FIGHT.

I didn’t know where I was going to get the strength to fight, especially when I did not have the strength to even cry. Very simply, there was absolutely no way that I was accepting this new image in the mirror. I was never EVER going to make my peace with this new level of pain, with this new lack of physical ability, no way I was ever going to say that stranger in the mirror was me. All I knew was that somehow, some way, if it took years or decades, I was going to get this figured out, God help me. ❤